Down For the Count
by Lorata
Summary: Lyme mentored Artemisia to victory her first year in the ring, making both of them a sensation. 4 years later, Artemisia tries her luck in the hot seat to see if she and her girl can pull off the same miracle.


It's the lazy hour before dawn. Artemisia's tribute is asleep behind an outcropping of rock, her sword tucked up close against her, safe behind the barrier of razor wire she stretched across every entrance. It cost more for that wire than all the snacks for the first week in the Arena, but Artemisia paid it without a second thought. The older mentors snorted and rolled their eyes that the newbie paid for something so dumb and paranoid, but nobody's going to creep up on her girl in the dead of night and slit her throat while she's sleeping, no thank you. They laugh, but Artemisia is smart, and they'll see when it's Alanna up on that stage and the rest of theirs go home in pieces.

(She wonders, if Devon were allowed to watch this year, if he'd realize he's the reason she thought of it. It's probably a good thing that he's home with Brutus, wrapped in blankets and swimming in the lake out behind Brutus' introvert cabin. It probably won't be that great for his recovery if he knew half of Artemisia's strategies came from making sure Alanna won't fall for anyone trying to copy the previous year's tactics.)

The boy's already gone, taken out by D4M in the split, but Artemisia is still here. There's only four of them left in Mentor Command; other than Misha it's the mentors from Eight, Ten and Four here in the end game. She probably shouldn't like it, but there's something thrilling about being the only Career remaining — only _true_ Career, anyway since Four sheds its mantle any time it's more convenient to play a sob story. Artemisia hasn't tried chumming it up with the other mentors; most of them hate her, her victory and complete lack of guilt for it too fresh in their minds, but who cares. She's here to win, not make friends.

The Gamemakers have set up a Feast for later in the morning, and Artemisia toggles the split-screen to check on the Cornucopia. They'll send Alanna food, most likely; she's got no injuries that can't wait until after the Games for treatment, and the last time Artemisia used a huge chunk of her sponsor money it had been on the wire, not food. A good Two tribute can a weeks without eating and still fight, but a full stomach won't protect against a slit throat before the sun rises.

Still, it's good not to be too desperate; the girl from Eight hasn't had food in so long that she spends most of her days curled in on herself with hunger cramps, shuddering and breathing in harsh rasps. Meanwhile Alanna's at the sweet spot for ratings, hungry enough for sympathy and audience interest, but not so much that she stops being attractive for the cameras. Two doesn't have it as bad as One, but none of their regular sponsors are going to pitch in for a tribute who's shaking and vomiting and can't put on a good show.

Alanna has angled herself so that the rising sun strikes her in the face to wake her up a good hour before the Feast. She gathers up her wire, wraps it in her jacket, and stuffs everything into her bag, then slings the pack over her shoulder and heads out. Smart girl, making sure to get there early; as long as she keeps an eye out for latecomers she should be able to get in and get out easy enough.

Artemisia tabs through the screens, keeping a vague eye on the other tributes. Nine's still asleep, her forehead scrunched in unconscious protest against the rising sun after a long night of bad dreams and sudden wake-ups; Four's awake but not moving yet, sharpening her glaive while staring out over the streets with half-mad intensity shining in her eyes.

And Eight —

Artemisia sits up in her seat, nearly knocking over the tea that's long gone cold at her elbow. Eight is at the Cornucopia already, hiding in the shadows as a platform opens in the ground and a table with four backpacks rises up from below. "What —" Artemisia mutters under her breath, and she glances over at the Eight console but can't tell anything from the mentor's placid expression.

One by one, Eight opens the bags for Two, Four and Nine to examine their contents. Two and Nine have food, and Four has a bottle of water, and Eight reaches into her pocket and pulls out a folded scrap of cloth. Artemisia watches, frozen, as she carefully unwraps her package — the cameras helpfully zoom in to show a handful of nondescript powder — and, slowly, methodically, pours one-third of its contents into each of the other tribute's gift.

Her task complete, Eight repackages the gifts, places them back on the platform, then runs away without taking her own. For a second Artemisia wonders why until it hits her: if Eight's pack was missing, the others would realize she was here first.

"No," Artemisia bursts out. Alanna is on the move now, sword slung over her shoulder and her pack thumping against the small of her back, and Artemisia has to do something — has to warn her, has to send her a message. She can't write anything explicit on a note, that's against the rules, but any smart tribute knows how to pick up hidden meanings from sponsor gifts. She can —

The sponsor panel buzzes when Artemisia tries to call it up, the screen flashing red with giant Xes covering every item when she tries to select them. "The fuck?" she says out loud, and tugs her headset up over her ears, activating her link to Gamemaker Control. "My comm's down," she snaps. Eight has disappeared, and Alanna's drawing close; meanwhile Four has packed up and headed out, and Nine finally rolls over and blinks at the light.

"There is no malfunction," says the voice in her headset. "No sponsor gifts are permitted for a minimum of twelve hours following the Feast."

Artemisia snarls and rips off the headset before she can say something that will get her and Alanna both in trouble. She knows this — the mentor training said as much, it's right there in the regulations manual — but little details have a way of blurring together after nearly three weeks without more than a few snatches of sleep.

The door to Mentor Central slides open, and Lyme's presence fills the room like a welcome burst of sunlight even before she drops down into the chair next to Artemisia. She's bleary-eyed and wearing her sleep-clothes with her hair sticking up in all directions, but her expression is alert and the hand she places on Artemisia's shoulder is strong and steadying.

Lyme pulls up the replay feed and scrolls back a few minutes to catch up on what she missed; when she sees Eight pour the powder into the food she hisses and snaps her head up to look at the main screen. "Shit," she says under her breath, and she tightens her grip on Artemisia's shoulder.

Alanna arrives at the Cornucopia, sword drawn, and the worst part is that she does everything perfectly. Artemisia picked her because she's crazy and unrepentant and that's a good contrast to Devon's humility but also because she's smart, and she doesn't rush in and make herself vulnerable to an ambush, doesn't wait around to try to plan one of her own. She grabs her bag and bolts, never once failing to keep an eye on her surroundings, and she makes it back to her hideout without incident.

Artemisia doesn't realize she's rocking back and forth until Lyme's hand slides to her back to make her stop. She swallows hard and bites her tongue, focusing on the pain and the taste of blood to try to ground her, but it's no good. Not when Alanna opens up her pack and sees a good solid meal — soup and bread and a nice, ripe apple — and her smile is so bright and unrestrained, crinkling her eyes and making the dirt smudged on her skin all but disappear.

"Fuck," Lyme says, and she moves to slide one arm around Artemisia's shoulders but stops when Artemisia jerks away.

The silence in the room has thickened, curling in on itself as Artemisia and the other mentors watch their tributes open their packs. Eight's mentor is no more relaxed than the rest of them, staring intently at his screen with more alertness than Artemisia would expect for a guy who has to have the Gamemakers' words dictated and displayed on his screen because he can't hear them.

Four is the first to go. She skips the food and goes straight for the water, tilting her head back and guzzling fast enough that her mentor makes a small noise at the back of his throat in protest. Even in a normal year she'd only puke it up after drinking that fast, but soon she stops, wipes her mouth and screws the cap back on. She's halfway to reaching for her meal of roasted fish when the retching hits.

Five minutes from the first foam on her lips to the cannon, and by that time Alanna has already polished off half her soup.

It's awful, honestly. Artemisia adds 'death by poison' to the list of ways that definitely do not beat being impaled with a sword, but she can't look away. Alanna throws up all over herself before she even realizes what's happening, and it's clear the pain hits her a moment later because her vitals go crazy at the bottom of Artemisia's screen.

Watching is worse than anything else Artemisia has ever experienced. Worse than listening to Jasper torture the kid from Twelve for hours and hours on end; worse than the blank, hate-filled faces of the districts on her Tour; worse than the guilt that eluded her for the first six months of her recovery, only to slam down hard out of nowhere in the middle of spring. Watching is all of that — the guilt, the horror, the churning of revulsion in her gut at the deaths that don't play out with a pretty splash of blood for the cameras — with the absolutely ugly paralysis of being unable to help.

Except — except that's not even the worst part.

Watching Alanna die is bad enough, but the worst part — the worst part is that before she does she looks at the camera, breaks all the rules about the fourth wall and letting the audiences have their veneer of spontaneity, and asks, "Why?"

One word, one word from a mouth that's stained with blood and foam and flecks of vomit; one word and a long stare from eyes that pin Artemisia to her seat with more fear and confusion and betrayal than she's ever seen her her life and never wants to see again. Alanna has no way of knowing that Eight poisoned the food; all she knows is that her gift from the Gamemakers — from her _mentor_ — has killed her.

Alanna stares straight into Artemisia's soul for a terrible, screeching eternity, then collapses into a fit of convulsions that lasts a full minute before the cannon fires.

Artemisia pushes her seat back and stands up so fast she slams her knee off the underside of the desk, but she barely notices. Lyme follows behind her but Artemisia doesn't turn, can't look at her, can't stand to see the pity and the disappointment and the _what the fuck ever_ will be crossing her face.

Brutus pulled his first Victor the first year of mentoring and so did Lyme, and Artemisia never said it out loud but she always thought she'd follow. Emory did not but she's not Artemisia; Artemisia out-scored her and out-killed her and out-dazzled her in everything else, and she'd thought —

It doesn't matter now. Alanna is dead and Artemisia failed and right now she really, really needs to taste blood that's not her own.

"No," Lyme says, and Artemisia stops at the front door to the complex, fists clenched and every muscle screaming.

"I'm going to go outside, and I'm going to find the first person nobody gives a shit about and I'm going to pull his insides out through his throat," Artemisia grits out slowly. "And you, _mentor_ , are not going to stop me."

Lyme doesn't touch her, but somehow just standing there behind her acts as though she'd tethered Artemisia in place with a fucking lasso. "If you go outside you're going to walk into a passel of a hundred journalists with their cameras and their flashbulbs and their questions, asking you how you feel about your tribute's death," Lyme says, calm and inexorable, and Artemisia hates her, so, so much. "You don't know your way around the Capitol back streets well enough to find where the best spots to kill anyone are, and if you try you'll end up getting tailed by Capitol Security and hauled back before you have any fun. And yes, _Artemisia_ , I very much fucking am."

For a second Artemisia almost fights her, almost knocks her down on the floor in front of the Avoxes and the silent Peacekeepers and the hundreds of fucking cameras everywhere — the urge rises and curls like smoke from a signal fire — but then, suddenly it stops. Exhaustion slices the thread of her anger and there's no point is there, no fucking point to anything at all.

Artemisia doesn't look at her now, either, just brushes past close enough that her shoulder slams into Lyme's arm and sends her back a step. She climbs the stairs up to the Two floor instead of taking the elevator because the thought of standing in silence even for a few floors makes her want to vomit, and she storms into the common area and heads for the kitchenette.

There's alcohol in the fridge, and it's Capitolian which means it will be fizzy and sugary as shit, but it'll do. Artemisia grabs the entire bottle, and Lyme's there when she comes out and she has to see and know what's going on but she doesn't say anything. Artemisia slams her way into the bedroom — or, more accurately, kicks over the dresser after the fucking door slides shut, silent and obliging — flings herself onto the bed, and wrenches the cork out of the bottle.

She drinks until the world fuzzes around the edges and the room slips sideways and everything goes black. Artemisia wakes up with a dead rat in her mouth, a demolitions team behind her eyes, a glass of water and two painkiller tablets on the dressing room table, and a monogrammed invitation to attend the post-Arena commentary show as a featured panelist.

"Fuck," Artemisia says deliberately, " _you_."

She'd like nothing better than to crawl into bed and sleep for the next three days, but Artemisia knows better, and she crunches the pills between her teeth, knocks back the glass of water, and drags herself to the shower.

She doesn't kill anyone at the live broadcast. Artemisia smiles, answers all the questions, and speaks of her fallen tribute with the proper level of solemnity that won't take away from Eight's glorious victory. Afterward Lyme pulls her into a hug and Artemisia lets her, doesn't hug back but doesn't fight as Lyme combs fingers through her hair.

"I hate them," Artemisia grits out into Lyme's shoulder. "I hate them all."

"I know, girl, I know." Lyme runs her nails over Artemisia's scalp and says nothing when the breaths start to sound a lot more like sobs. "She's back at the morgue now, if you want to take care of the body. If you don't the Avoxes will do it."

Artemisia shakes her head and pulls away. "No," she says. She failed to bring Alanna home; she can hardly abandon her to the blandly professional care of the morgue attendants now. "I'll do it."

Lyme nods. She doesn't offer to join her, and for a second Artemisia's stung until she realizes that this is how she wants it. "I'll see you back upstairs."

"Yeah." Artemisia wipes her eyes, and lets out a sputtering laugh. Looks like she beat her mentor to something after all — six years in the Capitol and Lyme has never seen the morgue, because she's never had to.

But Alanna is waiting for her, and Artemisia isn't going to leave her alone, not this time. Artemisia turns, finds an Avox waiting — of course — and steps into the elevator.


End file.
